In Canada and around the world, committing truth and reconciliation with regard to how settler societies have abused and disrespected Indigenous communities, requires community-led research approaches that reflect Indigenous ways of knowing and acting.

In her recently announced position as Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Methodologies with Youth and Communities, OISE Professor Eve Tuck will provide significant leadership at this important time.

“Dr. Tuck’s research is extremely innovative, timely and important,” said Abigail Bakan, Chair of Social Justice Education at OISE. “We are in an era of considerable, and long overdue, attention on reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, particularly regarding education. Dr. Tuck’s CRC focusses on Indigenous methodologies, specifically with youth and communities, and will involve these communities centrally in every stage of the research process.”

“We will all benefit greatly from this work – in the Department of Social Justice Education, at OISE, at the University of Toronto, and in the wider community,” she noted.

“Eve’s program of research on participatory, community-based Indigenous research methodologies will make a vital contribution to the understanding of how we can and should engage communities in collaborative research,” he said.

Noting that OISE has a number of outstanding professors pursuing critical scholarship on Indigenous ways of knowing and education, Jones said, “I am extremely pleased that one of these excellent scholars, Eve Tuck, will receive national recognition through her appointment as a Canada Research Chair. Eve is an exceptional scholar and a huge contributor to our community. Her work will have both national and international impact.”

Impact of social movements on youth

Prof. Tuck says her work as Canada Research Chair aligns well with research she’s conducting as part of an SSHRC IDG (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grants), for which she is already running a participatory project. This work, ‘Making sense of movements’, will be part of her CRC research agenda.

“These are young Black and Indigenous youth who are growing up during the Idle No More and Black Lives Matter movements. We’re using photovoice (participatory photography research) to think about how growing up during those social movements informs the decisions young people make about what they’ll do after high school and the kinds of futures they can dream,” she explained, noting the research also involves thinking about Toronto as Indigenous land and the type of “shared futures” people living there can have.

‘We both teared up’

Overall, Prof. Tuck says she’s extremely grateful for the CRC appointment and the opportunity to pursue such important work.

She first learned she’d been selected for the CRC at the AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference, when two OISE colleagues, Lara Cartmale and Michele Peterson-Bidali, pulled her aside to tell her she’d been chosen.

“They came into the room just before the session was about to begin, and they called me down…they did it in a way that made me wonder if it was an emergency. It didn’t cross my mind at all that they were sharing this news. Then Lara said, ‘You got it!’ and we both teared up because we had worked really hard,” she said. “There was a whole team of people involved to make the application ready and it was really neat to have been told in that way.”